6. Official recognition of the English language, and an equal use of it
and the Dutch tongue.
During the first days of October the situation became more and more
serious. Certain attempts at conciliation were still made. On October
5, President Steyn demanded that the massing of troops on the frontier
should cease. But on the 6th Sir Alfred Milner replied that he could
not accede to his request. Mr. Steyn accordingly wrote to the Governor
of Cape Colony 'that the success of further negotiations was very
doubtful, as the Transvaal would refuse any conditions whatever laid
down by Her Majesty's Government if British troops continued to arrive
while negotiations were in progress.'
Finally, on October 10 the Boer ultimatum was handed to Mr.
Conyngham-Green. The Transvaal Executive had demanded an answer within
twenty-four hours, but the delegates of the Orange Free State got the
term extended to forty-eight hours.
War was declared on October 11. The Boer commandos grouped themselves
in two principal centres, the Orange Free State and Natal. In the Free
State, Du Toit and Kolby invested Kimberley on October 14. Cronje
advanced against Methuen in the south-east, Schoeman against Colesberg,
and Olivier to meet Gatacre south of Aliwal North.
In Natal, Botha, Schalk Burgher, Lucas Meyer and Prinsloo, under the
Commander-in-Chief Joubert, marched upon Ladysmith.
On October 20 a desperate engagement took place at Glencoe. General
Symons, himself mortally wounded, lost sixty killed, 300 wounded, and
300 prisoners. The Boers had seventy men killed.
On October 21, at Elandslaagte, the German Legion and the Scandinavians,
surprised by the enemy, were slaughtered by the English Lancers after a
heroic resistance.
On the 23rd, at Dundee, Generals Yule and White were obliged to fall
back on Ladysmith.
Finally, on October 30, under the very walls of the town, at Lombard's
Kop, General White, beaten again, lost 300 dead and wounded, 1,200
prisoners and ten guns.
On November 2 Ladysmith was invested.
To judge by the behaviour of the Boers at this juncture, it would have
seemed that the siege of the three towns, Mafeking, Kimberley and
Ladysmith, was the end and object of the whole campaign.
They had at this stage of the war one of the most magnificent
opportunities imaginable. Full of confidence, flushed with success,
well equipped, and more numerous than they would ever be again, they
might have reckoned on the co-operation of the Cape Boers, who,
believing in the possible success of their brethren, were preparing to
throw in their lot with them.
Against them they had some 40,000 English, half of them only just
disembarked, unacclimatized, untried in warfare, the other half
discouraged by recent events and scattered over a vast area.
Order and effort prolonged for one week only would have overwhelmed and
annihilated the English army. Cape Colony and Natal would have thrown
off the yoke, associating themselves with the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State, and the United States of South Africa would have been a
power to reckon with. But no! Nothing was attempted. Joubert seemed to
be hypnotized before Ladysmith, Du Toit before Kimberley.
And, quietly and undisturbedly, England gradually disembarked the
200,000 men Lord Kitchener thought necessary for the work in hand.
Nevertheless, for two months more the incapacity of the English generals
all along the line thrust the flower of the Queen's battalions under the
deadly fire of the Mausers, without a chance of fighting for their
lives, so to speak.
On November 10, at Belmont, Lord Methuen was repulsed with heavy loss.
A month later, at Stormberg, General Gatacre ventured an advance without
scouts, without a map, blindly following a guide whose course he did not
even verify by a compass.
The advance took place in the utmost disorder, though it had been
arranged forty-eight hours, previously. The ambulance lost touch with
the detachment, and went its own way. The 2nd Battalion of the
Northumberland Fusiliers lost its ammunition-waggon. The column
advanced in close order to within 100 yards of the Boer entrenchments
without any warning, and was decimated. Gatacre lost 100 men killed and
700 prisoners.
On December 11, at Magersfontein, Lord Methuen had a second disaster to
deplore. Half an hour after midnight, after twenty-four hours of
artillery preparations and bombardment of the Boer entrenchments, five
Highland regiments advanced in line of quarter-column. The night was
dark, and rain was falling in torrents. At half-past three in the
morning the English halted, not very sure of their route. In an instant
a deadly fire poured out from the rocks. They were less than 200 yards
from the trenches occupied by Cronje's men.
The Black Watch was decimated. General Wauchope fell, crying: 'My poor
fellows! 'twas not I who brought you here!' The Marquis of Winchester
was also killed.
The whole body was demoralized, and it was not possible to make the
fugitives lie down till they had reached a distance of several hundreds
of yards. 'It was,' says an eye-witness, 'one of the saddest sights
that could wring the heart of an English soldier of our times.'
In this turmoil of confusion and indecision, Lord Methuen only gave the
order to retire towards four o'clock in the afternoon. More than a
thousand dead strewed the battle-field, and no help was given to the
wounded till the following day.
In the last letter he wrote to England, Wauchope said: 'This is my last
letter, for I have been ordered to attempt an impossible task. I have
protested, but I must obey or give up my sword.... The men of the
Modder River army will probably never follow Lord Methuen in another
engagement.'
Finally, on December 15, the Battle of Colenso was fought. I borrow an
account of it from Sir Redvers Buller's telegram despatched from
Chieveley Camp in the evening:
'I regret to report serious reverse. I moved in full strength from camp
near Chieveley this morning at 4 a.m. There are two fordable places in
the Tugela, and it was my intention to force a passage through at one of
them. They are about two miles apart, and my intention was to force one
or the other with one brigade, supported by a central brigade.
'General Hart was to attack the left drift, General Hildyard the right
road, and General Lyttleton in the centre to support either.
'Early in the day I saw that General Hart would not be able to force a
passage, and directed him to withdraw. He had, however, attacked with
great gallantry, and his leading battalion, the Connaught Rangers, I
fear suffered a great deal. Colonel Brooke was severely wounded.
'I then ordered General Hildyard to advance, which he did, and his
leading regiment, the East Surrey, occupied Colenso Station and the
houses near the bridge.
'At that moment I heard that the whole of the artillery I had sent to
that attack--namely, the 14th and 66th Field Batteries and six naval
12-pounder quick-firing guns, the whole under Colonel Long, R.A.--were
out of action, as it appears that Colonel Long, in his desire to be
within effective range, advanced close to the river. It proved to be
full of the enemy, who suddenly opened a galling fire at close range,
killing all their horses, and the gunners were compelled to stand to
their guns.'
Desperate efforts were made to bring back the guns, but only two were
saved by the exertions of Captain Schofield and two or three of the
drivers.
It was here that Lieutenant Roberts, of the 66th Battery of Artillery,
son of Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, met a glorious death.
'Some of the waggon-teams got shelter for troops in a donga, and
desperate efforts were made to bring out the field-guns, but the fire
was too severe, and only two were saved by Captain Schofield and some
drivers, whose names I will furnish.
'Another most gallant attempt with three teams was made by an officer
whose name I will obtain. Of the 18 horses, 13 were killed, and as
several of the drivers were wounded, I would not allow another attempt.
'As it seemed they would be a shell mark, sacrificing loss of life to a
gallant attempt to force passage unsupported by artillery, I directed
the troops to withdraw, which they did in good order.
'Throughout the day a considerable force of the enemy was pressing on my
right flank, but was kept back by the mounted men under Lord Dundonald
and part of General Barton's brigade.
'The day was intensely hot and most trying to the troops, whose conduct
was excellent.
'We have abandoned ten guns, and lost by shell-fire one.
'The losses in General Hart's brigade are, I fear, heavy, though the
proportion of severely wounded is, I hope, not large.
'The 14th and 66th Field Batteries also suffered severe losses.
'We have retired to our camp at Chieveley.
'The Boer losses are said to be over 700 men.'[#]
[#] This statement does not appear in the _Times_ report of General
Buller's telegram.--TRANSLATOR.
No, General, we did not lose 700 men that day.
General Botha's report gave 8 dead and 20 wounded, while more than 2,000
English lay on the battle-field.
Round about the batteries especially the carnage had been terrible. The
Boers, ambushed on a little kopje on the further side of the Tugela, 300
metres from the cannon, kept up an unerring fire for an hour.
December 15, be it noted, has long been a day of rejoicing in the
Transvaal. It is the anniversary of the Battle of Bloedriver, when
Pretorius, to avenge the massacre of Pieter Retief and over 500 Boers,
defied the bands of the Zulu chief Dingaun. This was on December 15,
1838, and on that eventful day Pretorius and his 400 men left 3,000
Zulus on the field, with a loss of only three wounded themselves.
After Colenso the victors had another splendid opportunity. They might
have pushed forward with the armies of Natal and the Free State. The
English troops had, it is true, been reinforced, but the arms of the
Republics were still victorious in every direction.
In the beginning, on the whole, the elements of success were
overwhelmingly with the Boers. These were superiority of numbers, of
marksmanship, a profound knowledge of the country, of which no accurate
maps exist, and the great distances between their opponents and such
reinforcements as the latter could depend on. It might have been said
that the fortune of war, taking into account the right and justice of
their cause, had been pleased to place all the elements of victory in
their hands. But neither the advice offered by the most authoritative
voices and based on the great teachings of military history, nor the
entreaties dictated by the most generous devotion to the cause of the
Boers, could rouse the superiors in command from the apathy that seemed
to have overtaken them.
Christmas passed in rejoicings on both sides. The belligerents exchanged
Christmas and New Year good wishes by the medium of shells specially
prepared, containing sweets, chocolates, etc. New Year's Day found them
all much in the same positions. The bombardment of the three towns,
Mafeking, Kimberley, and Ladysmith, continued.
However, on January 6 Joubert made up his mind to attack--if, indeed,
that strange encounter, aimless and incoherent, can be called an attack.
Was it an assault by the besiegers or a sortie of the besieged? Perhaps
both. It took place at Platrand. Four or five hundred of Prinsloo's men
were seriously engaged; the others (there were 6,000 round the town)
took up positions early in the morning, quitted them towards ten o'clock
to come back and breakfast in camp, returned to them later, and remained
for the rest of the day 1,800 yards from the town, which was no longer
defended, without firing a shot, without a thought of throwing
themselves against it or of going to the help of their comrades, hotly
engaged close by. In the evening they went back quietly to camp, while
the commandos of Zand River, Harrismith, Heilbron, and Kroonstad had
fifty-four killed and ninety-five wounded. The English lost 138 killed
and over 200 wounded. A little dash, decision, and cohesion, and the
town might have been taken. Such was Colonel de Villebois-Mareuil's
opinion.
But even in the full flush of success we shall never find among the
Boers that eagerness, that scorn of death, that enthusiasm which sweep
troops forward and make great victories.
The same day, at Colesberg, an _accident_ (this word is a happy
invention of General French's to denote a reverse) cost the English 150
lives, among them that of Colonel Watson.
The sieges followed their--I will not say normal--course, for the
ill-defended towns ought long ago to have been taken by the Boers. Such
was the general situation, more or less, when we landed.